This One's About School Libraries
This One's About School Libraries
On the frontlines of the "War on Reading"
First, a look at Missouri, where school libraries are now mandated to remove books containing any “explicit sexual material.”
Here’s more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
School librarians across Missouri are pulling books from shelves as they face the potential for criminal charges under a new state law banning “explicit sexual material.”
Violations of the law by school employees who provide such materials to students are considered a class A misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a fine of $2,000.
Accusations of “Grooming” and a Call to File Police Reports
When they were debating bills related to education earlier this year, some Republican state lawmakers said they wanted to address concerns that students were being indoctrinated against their parents’ wishes. Rep. Dottie Bailey, R-Eureka, claimed at the time that school districts were “grooming their children to be sex addicts” by allowing them to read certain books.
The conservative activist group St. Charles County Parents Association recently posted book ratings on its website and links to file police reports “to arm parents with as much knowledge as possible to combat the perversion agenda that is being forced on our children.”
Meanwhile, in Tennessee:
Daily Kos reports on emails like the one below being sent to educators and notes that no additional staff, funding, or time has been provided in order to meet this mandate.
The TN General Assembly has passed Public Chapter 744 titled the “Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022.” This Act requires each public school to maintain, and post on the school’s website, a list of the materials in the school’s library collection as well classroom libraries.
The purpose of the Act is to provide parents and school employees the opportunity to object to material contained in the school’s library collections as well as classroom libraries that they feel is not age appropriate and for local boards of education to establish a process to review such complaints. The goal is to allow employees, parents, and the school board to “ensure that the materials are appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials, and that the materials are suitable for, and consistent with, the educational mission of the school.”
According to this law each classroom teacher needs to create a list of books they have in their classroom libraries that students can access prior to allowing students access to those books.
[district redacted] is aware that this will take time for teachers to complete should they wish to have open libraries in their classroom. Additionally, [district] is expecting more guidance on this in the weeks and months ahead. State law requires the Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission to issue guidance by 12/1/2022. However, we are bound by the current state law now even though there is not additional guidance yet.
Please note, there is NO district requirement that teachers create and publish a list. However, they will not be able to utilize their classroom libraries for student access until a list is posted online.
Should a teacher want to begin creating a list, the list will need to contain both the full title of the book followed by the author’s name (last, first). For example: Charlotte’s Web - White, E.B.
One Tennessee teacher describes the situation in a short video:
